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Sports Conflict Institute

Sports Conflict Institute

Written by: Sports Conflict Institute
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 Master Sports Conflict and Negotiation. Win Everywhere.™ Economics
Episodes
  • Championship Mediation: How Dr. Stephanie Westmyer Thinks About Sports Conflict Resolution

    Championship Mediation: How Dr. Stephanie Westmyer Thinks About Sports Conflict Resolution
    Jan 2 2026
    Dr. Stephanie Westmyer’s Triangle Effect framework reveals how unresolved conflict silently undermines collegiate athletic performance, with student-athletes trapped between academic pressure, athletic demands, and fear of retaliation. Her innovative approach combining communication training, dispute resolution, and sports-specific mediation offers transformative solutions for teams where locker room tensions cost championships and careers. Interview by Anna Agafonova • Sports Conflict Institute • 24 min read Categories: Collegiate Athletics | Conflict Resolution | Team Dynamics Executive Summary The Framework: The Triangle Effect integrates communication skills, dispute resolution, and sports-specific context to transform how student-athletes navigate conflict from paralysis to championship performance. The Challenge: Student-athletes face triple pressure—academics, athletics, and personal life—while fear of retaliation keeps conflicts festering, ultimately manifesting as lost games and fractured teams. The Solution: Mediation as “championship opportunity” where neutral facilitators enable win-win outcomes, preserving relationships while resolving disputes that traditional hierarchical approaches cannot address. In this illuminating SCI TV interview, Dr. Stephanie Westmyer unveils a revolutionary approach to collegiate athletic conflict that challenges fundamental assumptions about team dynamics and performance. Her Triangle Effect framework—born from witnessing a well-dressed athlete “flubbing through his professional presentation”—addresses the hidden crisis undermining American collegiate sports: the systematic suppression of conflict that transforms championship potential into mediocrity. Westmyer’s unique credentials—doctorate in communication, master’s in dispute resolution, MLB experience, and personal athletic journey including conquering Rwandan mountains—position her to see what others miss. Her observation that “games are lost because of lack of connection and communication” rather than skill deficits reframes athletic failure from physical to relational causation.1 This insight proves particularly crucial in the NIL era, where financial disparities between quarterbacks earning millions and teammates receiving “scooters” create unprecedented locker room tensions. This analysis examines three critical dimensions of Westmyer’s framework: first, the unique pressures creating conflict in collegiate athletics; second, the systemic barriers preventing resolution; and third, the mediation model that transforms conflict from performance destroyer to championship catalyst. Her work reveals how student-athletes navigate impossible tensions between academic excellence and athletic dominance while institutional structures inadvertently perpetuate the very conflicts they claim to prevent. The Pressure Cooker: Understanding Student-Athlete Conflict Dynamics Westmyer’s characterization of student-athletes as performing “two jobs”—academics and athletics—understates the complexity they face. These young adults navigate triple demands: maintaining GPA for eligibility, performing at elite athletic levels, and managing personal crises from family illness to parental divorce. The intensity at Division I levels transforms this juggling act into psychological warfare where “intrapersonal communication”—internal dialogue—becomes battlefield for self-worth.2 Westmyer’s observation that this leads to “low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression” reveals mental health crisis masked by athletic glory. The fear of retaliation Westmyer identifies—athletes staying quiet to avoid being benched—creates toxic silence where conflicts metastasize from manageable disagreements to team-destroying cancers. This dynamic proves particularly destructive in football where “slightest move, eye contact, head gesture” determines success or failure. When unresolved interpersonal conflicts disrupt these micro-communications, championship teams become dysfunctional groups of talented individuals. The “undercurrent running through the team” Westmyer describes operates like organizational infection, invisible yet debilitating. High school athletes face additional pressure as Division I dreams intensify every interaction. Westmyer’s insight that these students are “caught between their coach and their parents” reveals triangulated conflict where young athletes become battlegrounds for adult ambitions. This dynamic establishes conflict avoidance patterns that persist through collegiate careers, creating athletes technically proficient yet relationally incompetent—precisely the combination that destroys team chemistry when pressure peaks.3 The NIL revolution compounds these pressures exponentially. As Anna Agafonova’s research reveals, financial disparities between teammates create resentments that traditional ...
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    22 mins
  • Go Slow to Go Fast: Building Repeatable Negotiation Success Without Red Tape

    Go Slow to Go Fast: Building Repeatable Negotiation Success Without Red Tape
    Dec 19 2025
    Repeatability in negotiation delivers risk insurance, not bureaucratic burden. Level 2 organizations achieve consistent success through simple fifteen-minute protocols that align strategy, capabilities, and incentives while avoiding the hundred-page manuals that paralyze execution. By Joshua A. Gordon, JD, MA & Gary Furlong, LL.M. • Sports Conflict Institute • 18 min read Categories: Negotiation Systems | Organizational Excellence | Strategic Implementation Executive Summary The Problem: Organizations resist systematic negotiation processes, fearing bureaucracy will slow execution and stifle creativity in dynamic deal environments. The Framework: Level 2 repeatable competency integrates organizational capabilities with individual factors through lightweight protocols that enhance rather than impede negotiation velocity. The Solution: Fifteen-minute pre-briefs aligned with strategy create consistency without complexity, raising both floor and ceiling of negotiation performance. Executive resistance to negotiation process typically manifests as a single objection: “We don’t want to slow things down with too much process.” This perspective fundamentally misunderstands repeatability, confusing risk insurance with red tape. Like teaching a seven-year-old to pack their backpack properly to avoid four return trips, organizational negotiation requires minimal upfront investment to prevent massive downstream rework. The principle of “go slow to go fast” revolutionizes negotiation capability by recognizing that fifteen minutes of structured preparation saves hours of reactive scrambling. Organizations achieving Level 2 repeatable competency discover that consistency accelerates rather than impedes execution, creating predictable success instead of random victories. This transformation requires neither hundred-page manuals nor certification programs but simple protocols that align organizational and individual capabilities. This analysis examines how organizations build repeatable negotiation competency without bureaucratic burden. The discussion proceeds in three parts: first, understanding the six integrated capabilities that enable repeatability; second, demonstrating how lightweight processes replace heavyweight documentation; and finally, implementing sustainable systems that raise both performance floor and ceiling simultaneously. Understanding the Challenge: The Six Integrated Capabilities Repeatable competency emerges from integrating three organizational capabilities with three individual factors, creating systematic excellence without suffocating flexibility.1 Strategy, values, and direction establish organizational North Stars that prevent divisions from sending contradictory signals to counterparties. Consider multinational apparel brands where cost-focused, sustainability-driven, and speed-obsessed divisions negotiate independently with the same suppliers. Without unified best-deal definitions, these organizations create confusion that undermines all negotiations regardless of individual negotiator skill. Human capital and organizational investment transform individual expertise into institutional capability through shared history and playbooks. Mid-sized technology companies rotating salespeople annually demonstrate the catastrophic cost of absent institutional memory.2 New representatives re-open settled issues, damaging relationships while confusing counterparties who question organizational stability. The worst negotiation outcome involves not rejection but confusion—confused counterparties stop paying attention, viewing the organization as unpredictable and therefore untrustworthy. Repeatable processes capture lessons, agreements, and patterns that transcend individual tenure. Incentive alignment represents the most conceptually simple yet practically complex capability challenge. Freight companies rewarding tonnage over profitability watch negotiators accept low-margin, high-risk contracts to hit volume targets.3 Government negotiators passionate about green energy push outcomes their cost-focused ministries cannot support. Professional sports teams hire relationship-focused negotiators who ignore analytics despite salary cap dependencies on data precision. These misalignments create internal competition replacing market competition, with organizational units fighting each other rather than advancing collective strategy. Individual capabilities of fit, knowledge, and interests must align with organizational requirements to enable repeatability. Labor negotiations exemplify fit failures when organizations hire external lawyers focused exclusively on minimizing union gains, damaging relationships that must endure for decades after negotiators depart.4 Regional utilities negotiating fuel contracts without environmental compliance expertise demonstrate knowledge gaps that repeatable processes identify early. Basketball teams where individuals ...
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    17 mins
  • The Hidden Epidemic: How One Bobsledder’s CTE Journey Is Revolutionizing Brain Health Advocacy

    The Hidden Epidemic: How One Bobsledder’s CTE Journey Is Revolutionizing Brain Health Advocacy
    Dec 12 2025
    Will Parson’s journey from Team USA bobsledder to brain health advocate exposes the devastating reality of CTE in sliding sports, where athletes routinely experience G-forces exceeding 80Gs. His candid account of cognitive decline, teammate suicides, and the transformative power of hyperbaric oxygen therapy challenges sports organizations to confront their responsibility while offering hope through accessible treatment models that could save lives across athletics and beyond. Interview by Anna Agafonova • Sports Conflict Institute • 25 min read Categories: Athlete Welfare | Brain Health | Sports Safety Executive Summary The Crisis: Bobsled athletes experience G-forces up to 84.5Gs—17 times what was previously disclosed—leading to epidemic levels of CTE, depression, dementia, and suicide among retired competitors. The Revelation: Symptoms often masquerade as other conditions, with athletes rationalizing memory loss, personality changes, and cognitive decline until crisis points force recognition. The Solution: Parson’s American Postconcussion Wellness Center model offers free hyperbaric oxygen therapy to athletes and veterans, addressing the $12,000 treatment cost barrier that leaves sufferers without options. In this powerful SCI TV interview, Will Parson, former Team USA bobsled athlete, breaks decades of silence surrounding brain injury in sliding sports. His story—marked by teammate suicides, personal cognitive collapse, and ultimate recovery—exposes a hidden epidemic affecting not just bobsledders but athletes across all high-impact sports. Parson’s journey from electrical engineering student to elite athlete to brain health advocate reveals how normalized violence against the brain has created a generation of suffering athletes abandoned by the very organizations that profited from their sacrifice. The numbers Parson shares shatter comfortable assumptions about sliding sports safety. While athletes were told they experienced 5 G-forces, actual measurements revealed spikes of 84.5Gs on “mild” tracks—forces that would be fatal in sustained exposure but create cumulative brain damage through repetitive micro-trauma.1 This revelation, combined with seven recalled crashes over nine years and countless subconcussive impacts, paints a picture of systematic neurological assault disguised as athletic competition. This analysis examines three critical dimensions of Parson’s testimony: first, the insidious progression of CTE symptoms that athletes rationalize until crisis; second, the institutional failures that perpetuate suffering through denial and abandonment; and third, the revolutionary treatment model Parson is pioneering to provide hope where none existed. His work challenges fundamental assumptions about sport, sacrifice, and society’s obligation to those who entertain through self-destruction. The Invisible Decline: How Champions Rationalize Their Own Destruction Parson’s account of symptom progression reveals the insidious nature of CTE development. The electrical engineering student who once excelled at complex mathematics found himself unable to calculate change at a store—yet rationalized this as stress or fatigue. This cognitive dissonance, where elite athletes normalize profound dysfunction, represents CTE’s cruelest mechanism: it attacks the very faculties needed to recognize its presence.2 Parson’s admission that he “minimized” and “rationalized” symptoms reflects not personal weakness but neurological sabotage of self-awareness. The nocturnal panic attacks Parson describes—waking disoriented, needing visual cues like European paintings or Olympic Training Center brick walls to establish location—reveal hippocampal damage affecting spatial memory and emotional regulation. His strategy of identifying location through environmental markers demonstrates remarkable adaptation to progressive neurological decline, yet also shows how athletes develop coping mechanisms that mask severity from both themselves and medical providers. The “mild, calm guy” experiencing panic represents fundamental personality alteration, not temporary stress response. The ex-girlfriend incident Parson recounts—failing to recognize someone intimate enough to jump into his arms—exemplifies prosopagnosia (face blindness) associated with temporal lobe damage in CTE.3 His rationalization that he “meets so many people” as an athlete demonstrates how high-achievers construct elaborate explanations for neurological symptoms. This self-gaslighting, where accomplished individuals convince themselves that dramatic cognitive changes are normal, delays intervention during potentially treatable stages. Parson’s morning routine adaptation—keeping coffee or Coca-Cola bedside because he “couldn’t get out of bed,” then determining day and month upon waking—reveals executive function collapse requiring external scaffolding for ...
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    26 mins
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